Anthony Sowell timeline

Plain Dealer fileAnthony Sowell in 1990.Anthony Sowell is in City Jail awaiting trial on charges of aggravated murder after police found the bodies of 11 women at his home on Imperial Avenue. Below are key dates in his life, his dealings with the criminal justice system and the various investigations into Sowell:

Aug. 19, 1959: Sowell is born. He is raised in East Cleveland.

Jan. 24, 1978: Sowell enlists in the Marine Corps. He serves eight years, in North Carolina, California and Okinawa.

Jan. 18, 1985: Sowell is discharged from the Marines and returns to East Cleveland.

May 27, 1988: Rosalind Garner is found strangled in her home on Hayden Avenue in East Cleveland. The case has not been solved.

Feb. 27, 1989: Carmella Prater is found dead in an abandoned building on First Avenue in East Cleveland. Prater lived on Page Avenue, the same street as Sowell. She had been beaten but the coroner was unable to pinpoint how she was killed. The case has not been solved.

March, 28, 1989: Mary Thomas is found strangled near an abandoned building on First Avenue, the same street where Prater was found. The case has not been solved.

July 28, 1989: A woman tells police that Sowell took her into his home on Page Avenue, bound and gagged her and raped her.

June 24, 1990: A Cleveland woman tells police that Sowell choked and raped her inside her home on East 71st Street. Police arrest him but no charges were filed because, police said, they were unable to get the woman to testify.

Sept. 12, 1990: Sowell is sentenced to five to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to attempted rape for the 1989 assault in his home on Page Avenue.

Plain Dealer fileAnthony Sowell in 1998.June 20, 2005: Sowell, after repeatedly being denied parole, is released from prison. He moves in with his father and stepmother at 12205 Imperial Avenue. He registers with the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office as a sex offender and is required to check in with them once a year.

June 29, 2007: A woman who lives across the street from Sowell calls City Hall to complain about a foul odor in the neighborhood, which she said smells like a dead person or animal.

January 2008: The Adam Walsh Act passes and Sowell is now required to report to the Sheriff's Office every 90 days.

Nov. 10, 2008: Barbara Carmichael sees her daughter Tonia, 52, for what would be the last time. Tonia Carmichael's car is found near East 115th Street and Kinsman Road a few days later, but there is no sign of her.

Dec. 2, 2008: Barbara Carmichael files a missing-persons report in Warrensville Heights. She tells police her daughter had a drug problem and sometimes disappeared between three and five days, but in this case she has not seen her daughter in three weeks and is worried something bad had happened.

Dec. 8, 2008: A bleeding woman runs up to a police car at East 116th Street and Kinsman. She tells police that Anthony Sowell asked her if she wanted to drink beer with him. When she said no, he punched her, choked her and tried to rip off her clothes. Police went to Sowell's home, went to the third floor and arrested him. Police later said no charges were filed because the woman did not want to talk to detectives.

Feb. 10, 2009: Warrensville Heights police check several houses between East 116th Street and East 120th Street near Kinsman Road and Oakfield Avenue, looking for Carmichael. No one recognizes photos of her, as was the case when they made other checks. They also check at bars and motels in Cleveland and East Cleveland, but no one has information on Carmichael.

Sept. 2, 2009: Sowell checks in at the Sheriff's Office, as he is required to do as a sex offender.

Sept. 22, 2009: Sheriff's deputies pay a surprise visit to Sowell's home to verify that he lives at the address he had given them. He answers the door and, as is standard, deputies do not enter.

Several hours later, Sowell persuades a woman to come to his house and drink malt liquor with him. She later tells police he got angry, choked her with an extension cord and raped her until she passed out.

She was able to get away after promising Sowell she would bring him $50 and not tell police about the incident, according to a police report. She went to police.

Plain Dealer fileAnthony Sowell in Nov. 2009Sept. 24, 2009: The case is assigned to a sex-crimes detective, who has difficulty reaching the victim. The woman's mother tells police she is difficult to contact.

Oct. 11, 2009: The victim in that case does not show up for an interview with detectives.

Oct. 20, 2009: An ambulance is sent to Sowell's house after neighbors call 9-1-1 to report a naked woman falling or being thrown from a second-floor window. Sowell tells rescue workers he and the woman had been doing drugs all day and that she accidentally fell out the window. EMS takes the woman to MetroHealth Medical Center and calls police, who go to Sowell's home but don't find anyone there. Police then go to Metro, where the woman refuses to talk to investigators.

Oct. 27, 2009: The woman from the Sept. 22. attack meets with sex-crimes detectives, who one day later get an arrest warrant for Sowell and a search warrant for his home.

Oct. 29, 2009: Police go to arrest Sowell but he is not home. They enter the house and find two decomposing bodies.

Oct. 30, 2009: Police find three more bodies -- two in a crawl space in the house and one buried in the basement's dirt floor.

Oct. 31, 2009: Sowell is arrested walking down Mount Auburn Avenue, about one mile from his home.

Nov. 3, 2009: Prosecutors charge Sowell with five counts of aggravated murder. Police find six more bodies at his home, most of them buried in the back yard.

Nov. 4, 2009: The Cuyahoga County coroner announces that all 11 victims are black women. At least eight of them were strangled, the coroner says. He makes the first identification of a victim: Tonia Carmichael.

Nov. 5, 2009: Police identify a second and third victim: Telacia Fortson and Tishana Culver. Both would have been 31 and both struggled with drug addictions, their families say. Fortson was last seen in June. Culver lived four houses down from Sowell and was last seen in 2008. Members of her family say they assumed she was in jail or living with a boyfriend in Akron.

Nov. 6, 2009: East Cleveland police announce they are reopening the investigations into the strangulations of Garner and Thomas and the killing of Prater. Cleveland police identify a fourth woman found at Sowell's home as Nancy Cobbs, 43.